Chancellor George Osborne: I hope Derby Cathedral is successful in repairs cash bid

CHANCELLOR George Osborne says he hopes Derby Cathedral will make a successful bid for a slice of a new £20 million pot of cash for repairs.

He has announced the money will be available to protect the country’s cathedrals, saying it was especially important ahead of their involvement in this year’s commemoration of the centenary of the First World War.

On a visit to Derby Cathedral yesterday, Mr Osborne said he hoped it would be successful in bidding for some of the cash.

And he said that, despite the need for more cuts in Government spending, it was the right time to be investing in cathedrals.

He said the funding was possible because his Government had a “grip on the nation’s finances” and that Budget announcements like the £20 million were not driven by wanting to woo Tories thinking of voting UKIP.

Sitting in Derby Cathedral Café, Mr Osborne said: “Cathedrals are at the heart of our cities and towns. As you can see here in Derby, it’s a fantastic building.

“Very sadly today, there is a funeral but many hundreds of people have come together to commemorate a life. So you can see they are at the heart of our communities and Derby Cathedral is evidence of that.

“I went in there and saw some of the work that needs doing.

“These centres of our community life should look their best.

“This [the £20 million] is one way we can help make sure Derby Cathedral goes on being at the heart of the community.

“Talking to the Dean [of Derby] and members of the clergy, they are delighted by this, and it enables them to focus on the work they do in the community rather than just repairing the building.”

The £20 million would be provided over two years, with Derby Cathedral now waiting to see the criteria before putting in a bid. The Dean of Derby, the Very Reverend Dr John Davies, said the cathedral needed a new heating system and redecoration.

He said: “Derby Cathedral, in common with other cathedrals, does have immediate and urgent repairs to make to the building and it is our hope that the scheme’s criteria will be sufficiently flexible for us to make an application.”

The Dean said the commemoration of the First World War was just one way that the cathedral would be at the centre of Derby’s community this year. He said: “There is a West Indian funeral today with 500 in attendance, the homeless are here on Wednesday nights [when the cathedral is operating as a night shelter until the end of this month], and tonight there is a major lecture and presentation.

“We have 60,000 people coming into the cathedral a year.”

He said that Derby Cathedral, as a newer cathedral, is at a financial disadvantage, because it does not have assets like buildings and land which older ones do. They can, for example, borrow against these “historical resources”.

Mr Osborne said he “did not accept” that policies in this month’s Budget, like investing in cathedrals and removing restrictions on access to pension pots, were a way of wooing people thinking of voting UKIP.

He said: “There are many millions of people who save and who vote for all sorts of different political parties. That’s not what this Budget is about.

“It’s a long-term economic plan to make sure this country comes out of the economic mess it was in stronger, that we fix what went wrong, and we address not just the obvious problems – that we had a big budget deficit and there are too many unemployed – but also we address long-standing issues that we don’t manufacture enough, we don’t export enough and we don’t save enough,’’ added Mr Osborne.

The Church of England has warned it is struggling to cope with an £87 million shortfall in funding for repairs across the country.